Nyāsa

From Woodroffe’s descriptions in Śakti and Śākta and The Garland of Letters. (Full nyāsa has many elaborate forms; the faithful, doable core is given here.)

1. Prepare. Sit erect, breath settled, ideally after bhūta-śuddhi (the purification that precedes it). Hold the intention to install the sacred into your body.
2. Choose the mantra(s) to place. Traditionally a guru assigns these. Simply, one may use a single bīja (e.g. OṂ or HRĪṂ) or a short divine name as the “sound” to be placed.
3. Place it, point by point, with touch and intention. Move through the body in a deliberate order, at each point touching the spot (or fixing attention there) while uttering/thinking the seed-sound and feeling the divine presence settle there. Common forms Woodroffe describes: - Aṅga-nyāsa (“limb-placing”) — placing the mantra on the body’s main parts: heart, head, crown-tuft, the two upper arms/shoulders, the eyes, and a final all-encompassing pass. - Kara-nyāsa (“hand-placing”) — placing the mantra on the fingers and palms in sequence, hand touching hand. At each placement: touch — sound — feel the spot become charged/sacred — move on.
4. Feel the body become the temple. As you proceed, build the felt sense that each touched point now holds the divine, and that the whole body is being assembled into a fit, sanctified vessel — you are no longer the ordinary body but the bearer of the mantra/deity.
5. Rest in the assumed state. After completing the placements, sit for a moment fully inhabiting this charged, sacred-bodied state.
6. Proceed to worship or meditation from within it. As with bhūta-śuddhi, nyāsa is a preliminary whose purpose is the practice that follows. (Sourcing note: nyāsa as ritual “placing” of mantras on the body, the aṅga-nyāsa / kara-nyāsa categories, and its place after bhūta-śuddhi and before worship are from Woodroffe’s Śakti and Śākta and Garland of Letters. Exact point-sequences vary by lineage/deity and are guru-given; the schematic order is indicative, noted as such.)

Nyāsa is a core element of Tantric/Āgamic ritual across Śākta and Śaiva traditions, prescribed in pūjā and sādhana manuals between purification and worship. Woodroffe (1865–1936) described it for Western readers in Śakti and Śākta (1929) and The Garland of Letters (1922).

It belongs to the same ritual chain as bhūta-śuddhi (clears the body) and japa/dhyāna (fills it), and is the somatic counterpart to mantra practice.

Tantric pūjā (Śākta/Śaiva) — the canonical setting: purify, then nyāsa, then worship.

• Tibetan Buddhist deity yoga — placing seed-syllables at crown/throat/heart (oṃ–āḥ–hūṃ) to consecrate the body; the direct parallel.
• Christian crossing oneself / anointing — touching forehead, chest, shoulders with sacred words; structurally the same gesture of placing the holy on the body.
• Somatic/embodiment psychology — self-touch and attention to body points to shift state and “embody” an intention.
• Embodied affirmation / “assuming the state” (Neville) — putting on a chosen identity, here made literally somatic (The Inner Creates the Outer).

Rote, hurried touching. The point is felt placement — touch, sound, and the sense of the spot becoming charged. Speed empties it.

• Skipping purification. Nyāsa traditionally follows bhūta-śuddhi; placing the sacred into an “unprepared” body skips the framing that gives it force.
• Getting lost in elaborate sequences. Authentic full nyāsa is complex and guru-specific; for self-practice, a simple, sincere heart/head/shoulders/hands sequence with one bīja is far better than a half-remembered elaborate one.
• Treating it as the goal. It is a preliminary — its job is to deliver you, embodied and charged, into the main practice.
• Literalising “installing a god.” Hold it as embodied assumption of a sacred state, not as magical deposit.